Two more centenarians after I M Pei and Herman Wouk:
David Louis Bartholomew (December 24, 1918 – June 23, 2019) was an American musician, bandleader, composer,
arranger and
record producer, prominent in the music of
New Orleans throughout the second half of the 20th century. Originally a trumpeter, he was active in many musical genres, including
rhythm and blues,
big band,
swing music,
rock and roll, New Orleans jazz and
Dixieland. In his induction into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he was cited as a key figure in the transition from
jump blues and swing to R&B and as "one of the Crescent City’s greatest musicians and a true pioneer in the rock and roll revolution."
[1]
Many musicians have recorded Bartholomew's songs, but his partnership with
Fats Domino produced some of his greatest successes. In the mid-1950s they wrote more than forty
hits for
Imperial Records, including the
Billboard R&B number one
chart hit "
Ain't That a Shame". Bartholomew's other hit songs as a composer included "
I Hear You Knocking", "
Blue Monday", "
I'm Walkin'", "
My Ding-A-Ling", and "
One Night". He was a member of the
Songwriters Hall of Fame, the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the
Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.
[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Bartholomew
George Rosenkranz (born
György Rosenkranz, August 20, 1916 – 23 June 2019)
[3] was a pioneering
Mexican scientist in the field of
steroid chemistry, who used native Mexican plant sources as raw materials.
[4][5] He was born in
Hungary, studied in
Switzerland and emigrated to the
Americas to escape the
Nazis, eventually settling in
Mexico.
[4][6]
At
Syntex corporation in
Mexico City, Rosenkranz assembled a research group of organic chemists that included future leaders from around the world, such as
Carl Djerassi,
Luis E. Miramontes and
Alejandro Zaffaroni[7][8][9][10][11][12] Revolutionary advances in the understanding of steroid drugs and their production occurred under Dr Rosenkranz's direction.
[13] Syntex synthesized a
progestin used in some of the first
combined oral contraceptive pills and numerous other useful steroids. Under Rosenkranz's leadership, Syntex became "a powerful international force in the development of steroidal pharmaceuticals",
[14] and "a pioneer of biotechnology" in the San Francisco Bay Area. Rosenkranz stepped down as CEO in 1982, at the age of 65.
[3]
In 2012, he was awarded the
Biotechnology Heritage Award, in recognition of his significant contributions to the development of biotechnology through discovery, innovation, and public understanding.
[10] He
turned 100 in August 2016.
[15] Rosenkranz is also an
American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) Grand Life Master at his hobby of
duplicate bridge, with more than 13,000 masterpoints and 12 NABC titles (
below). He has written or co-written more than 10 books on bridge.
[16]
Born in
Budapest, Hungary, in 1916, Rosenkranz studied chemistry at the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, where he received his
doctorate.
[3] His mentor, future Nobel Prize winner
Lavoslav Ružička, began Rosenkranz's interest in steroid research. However, Nazi sympathizers were active in
Zurich. Ružička shielded Rosenkranz and other
Jewish colleagues, but their presence put their mentor at risk. "We got together and we decided to leave Switzerland to protect him," Rosenkranz said in a 2002 article for the Pan American Health Organization's magazine.
[6]
Ružička arranged an academic position for Rosenkranz in
Quito,
Ecuador. While Rosenkranz was waiting in
Havana,
Cuba for a ship to
Ecuador, the Japanese attacked
Pearl Harbor. The United States immediately entered
World War II. Unable to go to Ecuador, Rosenkranz accepted the Cuban president
Fulgencio Batista's offer allowing refugees to stay in the country and work. He found work at the Vieta Plasencia Lab, where he was asked to develop treatments for
venereal disease.
[5]
The important role of hormones in human health was already known, but ways to synthesize them were unknown. George Rosenkranz's skills as a chemist attracted the interest of
Emeric Somlo, a Hungarian immigrant, and Dr.
Federico Lehmann at
Syntex in Mexico City, Mexico.
[17] They had formed the company in 1944 to work with
Russell Marker, a Penn State professor, and sought to synthesize the hormone
progesterone from
diosgenin-containing Mexican yams, which would eventually give rise to the
Mexican barbasco trade.
[18]:183 After a disagreement Marker left, taking his steroid knowledge with him. Rosenkranz was recruited to replace him, and moved to
Mexico City in 1945.
[6][7]
Rosenkranz faced the challenge of analyzing Marker's samples to identify their ingredients and
reverse engineering Marker's chemical production processes. He didn't have much help: his initial staff included nine lab assistants and only one other chemist,
[19] and Mexico lacked a
Ph.D. program in chemistry.
[20]
When he couldn't find enough fully trained local chemists, Rosenkranz recruited researchers from Mexico and around the world. Rosenkranz also helped to create an institute of chemistry, the Instituto de Quimica (
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), now considered "a flagship in Mexico's ethnobotanical research".
[21] He was able to attract significant synthetic organic chemists as researchers and instructors and to obtain funding to expand programs for the training of organic chemists. He and his colleagues regularly worked at Syntex during the day and then spent the evenings teaching chemistry. Rosenkranz also helped to start the
Institute for Molecular Biology in
Palo Alto.
[20]
Attracting young chemists such as
Carl Djerassi,
Luis E. Miramontes and
Alejandro Zaffaroni was critical to Syntex's first big success.
[7][22] The Mayo clinic had reported that the steroid hormone
cortisone was an effective anti-inflammatory, capable of relieving painful rheumatoid arthritis symptoms. However, as described by Djerassi, "Until 1951, the only source of cortisone was through an
extraordinarily complex process of 36 different chemical transformations starting from animal bile acids."
[23] Several prominent groups of international scientists were attempting to be the first to synthesize cortisone. Rosenkranz's team started working in two shifts, and their dedication paid off. In 1951, Rosenkranz, Djerassi, and their fellow researchers submitted a paper on the synthesis of cortisone, edging out reports from Harvard and Merck by a matter of weeks.
[11][24][25][26]
George Rosenkranz (right) and
Luis E. Miramontes (left), 2001 at
UNAM, in Mexico City
Having successfully synthesized cortisone, the researchers at Syntex continued to work on the synthesis of progesterone. A female sex hormone, progesterone was used to help pregnant women avoid miscarriages, and to treat infertility.
[23] Five months later, under the direction of Rosenkranz and Carl Djerassi, the last step of the synthesis of
norethisterone (norethindrone) was successfully completed by
Luis E. Miramontes, and Syntex applied for a patent, which was granted as US patent 2,744,122 on May 1, 1956.
[6][25][27] Syntex initially reached an agreement with the American company
Parke-Davis to market norethisterone as
Norlutin for the treatment of gynecological disorders, which was approved by the FDA in 1957.
[28] Parke-Davis however refused to develop Syntex's norethisterone as a contraceptive over concerns about a possible
Catholic boycott of its other products.
[29] This delay placed Syntex at a disadvantage, but by 1962, they had partnered with
Johnson & Johnson's Ortho division to introduce the birth control pill
Ortho-Novum, which used Syntex's norethisterone.
[20][28][30] In March 1964, the FDA approved Syntex's version of
Ortho-Novum with the brand name
Norinyl (norethisterone 2 mg +
mestranol 100 µg).
[20][30][31] In March 1964, the FDA also approved Parke-Davis's version of the German company
Schering's oral contraceptive
Anovlar with the brand name
Norlestrin (
norethisterone acetate 2.5 mg +
ethinylestradiol 50 µg).
[31]
Rosenkranz understood the importance of peer recognition, not just commercial success, to the scientists who worked for him. He has said, "To have people work productively, you have to build an intellectually challenging environment, allow creative freedom, and insure peer recognition and respect for the individual."
[32] A cascade of papers on steroid chemistry issued from the Rosenkranz lab during the 1940s and 1950s.
[11][20] Rosenkranz himself is the author or co-author of over 300 articles in steroid chemistry and is named on over 150 patents.
[10]
Rosenkranz gave up his executive positions at Syntex in 1981.
[10] Although technically retired for over three decades, Rosenkranz is still active in the industry. In 1996, he became a member of the board of
Digital Gene Technologies[33] He is also president of the advisory board of ICT Mexicana.
[32]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Rosenkranz